Google recently announced their plan to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This is a MAJOR purchase for Google and could be a BIG game changer in the mobile market. Now that Google is a hardware manufacture, will other mobile hardware manufactures turn away from Android?
I think many of the current manufactures using Android will, at least, think about an alternative mobile phone OS. Why wouldn't they, Google is no longer an ally, but now Google is competing directly with every mobile phone maker currently using Android. How can Google expect to play nice with all of the hardware manufactures and compete with those same hardware manufactures?
Will we see Motorola phones go pure, natural Google Android or will Motorola phones continue to use graphical user interfaces (GUI) like Motorola's Blur? My guess is that Motorola will go the route of a natural Android experience, much like the Nexus line of phones. It will also be interesting to see if Google continues to share Android openly, or if they start to offer certain new features exclusively (even if its for a short time period).
In my opinion, one thing is for certain, mobile hardware manufactures will shop around for other mobile OS options. The biggest winners from this purchase may actually be the very people Google is trying to compete against. Companies looking to license their operating systems (OS) like Microsoft (WP7), MeeGo, Mozilla, and HP (webOS) will probably be seeing increased interest, which may turn into increased market share.
No comments:
Post a Comment